For Some Definitions of Normal
by Manita
Summary: My Forsaken DK got emo about an RP scenario and this was the result. On the upside, it did give me a chance to explore some of his backstory.


For Some Definitions of Normal

"What to wear, what to wear." Ranciel scuttled 'twixt bags and chest muttering to himself as he tugged out mouldering scraps of clothing and rusted armour. "Can't wear armour. No, no, not to this, not to see friends, not to see friends of friends."

"You shouldn't be going at all." The chill monotone voice of his runeblade, Crimsonheart, sliced across his thoughts. "Death and destruction is all you are."

"Pah!" he sneered. "Day's long gone when I let you tell me, damn you." Which wasn't strictly true. The blade was all that animated him; without it he would feel the bite of true death and, despite everything, Ranciel wasn't sure he was ready for that just yet. So here he was, trying to be normal, trying to fit in, trying to get on with what remained of his life.

"Aha!" Right at the bottom, hidden under a half-used bearskin, were his overalls. "Perfect," he crowed, hopping around from foot to foot, his armour clanking and crunching. "Right and proper clothes for a right and proper time." He scrubbed at the faded blue cloth. It was a bit threadbare in places and had a few fish oil stains that never had come out, but it wasn't blood and it wasn't decay and it wasn't rotten, thus it would do.

"And what about your face?"

Ranciel flinched. "I'll wear the helm."

It shouldn't be possible for an inanimate object to laugh. Then again it shouldn't be possible for something not alive to be walking around. Which just went to show you never could tell. Crimsonheart's laugh was like walking face first into a blizzard. "You think you will look normal then? Foolish shell. Or maybe you should wear nothing at all. So they can see what you really are, and you can see them. Hot and warm and smelling of so much fresh blood and tasty throbbing meat. You won't last five minutes and then, hah! I shall rip as much from their souls as you do from their flesh."

"Shut up! Shut up!" Ranciel dug deeper into the chest, scraps and bits flying as his actions grew frantic. Damned blade was right. He couldn't wear his helm, and he couldn't go without. He needed something. Something that would keep him safe, keep them safe. A barrier against a world that too quickly overwhelmed him.

He reached the bottom and came up empty, saronite-gloved fingers scraping across the wooden base of the chest. "Nothing, nothing," he muttered. "Nothing here. Nothing to be had. Got to have something." He had gold. Maybe he should buy a muzzle? Or buy the parts to make one. Yes!

He fell over part of the solution on the way to the door. An old diving helmet he'd scavenged from trappers on the Borean Tundra. Currently it was full of bolts and scraps and gizmos that wouldn't fit in his toolbox. He tipped those into the now-empty chest and sat down with the helmet upturned on his lap, staring at the insides. It was designed to be worn with a suit, screwed down and fixed in place. That wouldn't work now, but Ranciel thought he could probably fix it so he couldn't get it off easily. Some leather straps, a buckle or two, the lock from one of those practice pieces.

A pattern came together in his head and he began to whistle thoughtfully. Behind him, the sunflower picked up the tune and started to hum, and a little beam of sunshine splashed against the centre of the death knight's armoured back.

"Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. All wrong." He should have known from the moment he saw them with their pretty clothes and their pretty hair and their high and mighty manners. They weren't for him. Never had been. Even when he was alive they would have been out of his reach. Gentlemen and ladies didn't lower themselves to speak to likes of him, a fishermen netting a living from the bottom reaches of Lordaeron Lake. An order maybe, or a kick or a blow, but never a real conversation.

But there had been laughter and smiling and talking and so he'd tried. Oh, he had tried. He'd dredged his faulty memory for small talk and found his tongue twisting on the words. He'd tried to take an interest and all he could see was the blood beating in their veins and the hectic flush of their skin.

He yanked off the diving helm and flung it across the room. It smashed into the lone chair sending chunks of wood and metal flying. It hadn't worked. It was too open, too clear, he could see too much and so could they.

Ranciel sank into a squat and cradled his head in his hands. Fool. Idiot.

"I told you not to go."

"Shut up!"

"You're not like them. You never will be. Go back to Him. He'll welcome you with open arms-"

"He's not there any more. He's gone."

"He's never gone. Never can be gone. Oh, the new one might think he has control now but we can feel Him, eating away at his edges, grinding away at his soul."

A shudder ran through Ranciel from his head to his toes making his bones rattle. He knew that feeling, knew it well. It made him want to crawl away, to find a hole just big enough for himself and no one else and not be. But there was nowhere to hide. When He came looking, there was nowhere safe.

Ranciel had tried once. The self-styled queen had come making promises. 'Freedom is there', she'd said, 'just be strong and he cannot take you'. Ranciel had believed her, had joined her guard and carried her banner and fought for her and worshipped the ground she bestrode.

But she had lied.

Ranciel spat. "Bitch! No way to escape, not if He comes." And he had come for Ranciel. Come in a Scarlet guise and ripped him apart, demolished his defences until He could steal back inside, to tear a fragile new soul from its body and devour it whole, only to vomit it into the blade Ranciel now carried. Transformed him into walking death, walking destruction, made him do to others what had been done to him. And then, when Ranciel finally had a place to belong, He turned His face away and abandoned them.

Pain, rage and bone-deep loneliness sent him to the floor proper, curled tight and close. He shouldn't have tried to be normal for the living. It always ended this way. Perhaps it was time to stop pretending and began behaving normally for what he was. A corpse.

He lay there for hours. Perhaps days. The sounds of Orgrimmar came and went outside his door. None knocked and none would. No one wished to draw the attention of death itself. He would be left alone to end as he wished to end.

"Coward," Crimsonheart hissed after an eternal silence. "I shall not let you do this."

Ranciel ignored it. Or tried to. Until the memories started. Only flashes at first; faces screaming, blood spattering, the usual things. Those had become almost easy to disregard. They were as much a part of his life today as they had been then. Only the faces had changed. Fewer innocents, more monsters.

Other memories came next. Sarah, or at least he thought it was Sarah. It was how he remembered her. Hair the colour of sunflowers, eyes like a storm on the lake. And her smile. Her smile was a sight to behold, full of life and joy in living. Ironic then that it was life which stole her away. New life. One they had created between them.

He remembered that day. Coming back from the boat and finding her on the bed, blood pooled around her like spread skirts. There was nothing that could have been done, the priest had said. The babe was growing in the wrong place and it would have killed her whether Ranciel had been there or no.

Ranciel had thanked him and walked away from the only place he had called home, leaving behind his wife's body and the toy he had made for their child. His next stop had been Brill just as the first of the population fell sick with the plague.

Such was the meat of his memory. The blade could not beat him with this. It was his own and he welcomed it. Drew it close and used it to ease his hunger.

Not so easily assuaged, Crimsonheart changed tactics. What came next was not memory. Or at least not Ranciel's memories. He saw a man, tall and thin and garbed in robes bruise-purple and black, striding through a graveyard. Behind him strung tendrils of shadow, floating out to skip across the mounds and each place they touched down, the ground began to crack and crumble and from the depths rose a corpse. Some were nothing but skeletons moving with puppet like jerks, others seemed almost alive, only the pallor of their skin giving away their true state.

Among the latter was a face he knew. Sarah. Mindless, shambling, her shroud a tangle around her legs, her feet bare, her eyes empty and soulless, she followed the necromancer, dancing to his unholy tune as a bear to a fiddle. Ranciel felt something he had thought himself beyond feeling, given all he had seen. Horror. But the blade was not finished.

"Do you wish to see more?" its chill voice slithered across his consciousness. "Would you like to see her kill? Consume? Devour? Such an excellent ghoul. With a ravenous taste for the young." The image snapped suddenly to one of soaring towers and white barked trees. A group of small figures cowered in bushes and Sarah, his beautiful Sarah lumbered towards them. She was naked but for blackish blood dappling her skin and scarlet splashes at mouth and hands. The children screamed and Ranciel could take no more. He sprang up, drawing the blade from his back and holding it out at arm's length.

"You think this will make me feed you?" he demanded. But the tactic had worked. Torn from his stupor he was suddenly and immediately aware of his body's demands. Before he had been able to ignore it. Now it raged, voracious and all-consuming.

"We both need to eat," Crimsonheart wheedled. "A few miles north and we can both feed. Naga, night elf, fresh and hot and enemies to the Horde. Come now. Where's the harm. Protecting the Horde is your sworn duty, after all."

It wasn't wrong. After Him, after Light's Hope, after betrayal and despair, there had been the War Chief. Thrall's forgiveness, his absolution, his boon to grant or to withhold, and it had lain around Ranciel's shoulders like the most cherished of standards. Armed with that he had ridden north, faced down his old friends and stood beside old enemies. Stood between Fordring and Mograine and had played his part, bringing Him to His knees and destroying Him as truly as if he had wielded the blade himself.

"And you're reduced to this? Because a few elves looked at you funny?"

Put that way, Ranciel could see Crimsonheart's point. It was rather pathetic.

He slid the blade back into its scabbard, fished his saronite helm from under the bed and put it and the rest of armour back where it belonged, strapped securely around his body; his comfort and his shield. Then he opened his front door and stepped out into the shadowed night-time streets of the Orcish capital. He hungered. Crimsonheart hungered. It was time to go hunting.


End file.
